# Faster, Fresher, More Exciting: Editing Powerful Videos in Premiere Pro CC - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/faster-fresher-more-exciting-editing-powerful-videos-in-premiere-pro-cc/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Video & Animation · Quick win · Rated 7 /10 # Faster, Fresher, More Exciting: Editing Powerful Videos in Premiere Pro CC Updated August 2026 Allan Michael · Creative Director and Founder of Digitano Media Intermediate · 61 min A 61-minute walkthrough of one editor's real project, showing exact keystrokes for pacing, sound design, and color grading in Premiere Pro CC. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Ffaster-fresher-more-exciting-editing-powerful-videos-in-premiere-pro-cc%2F467696567) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. Allan Michael's course is built around a single 45-second promotional video, and nearly every lesson is a screen-recorded walk back through the decisions that shaped it. That structure is both its biggest strength and the main limit on how far it can take a student. ## What actually gets taught The course opens with two short framing lessons (a trailer and a project overview) before settling into a genuinely useful resource roundup: Dissolve, Beachfront B-roll, Epic Slow Mo, the YouTube Audio Library, and Freesound, each assessed with specific, practical notes (a monthly cap of three free clips on Dissolve, a per-genre search on the audio library) rather than a generic list of links. From there the course moves through a clear production arc: setting up a project template and bin structure, editing a music track down to a usable length while preserving its punctuation points, laying a rough cut of selects, fine-tuning those cuts against the beat, layering blend modes and creative dissolves, applying a keyframed color shift, building an animated title out of a sliced text clip, and exporting. The music-editing lesson is where the course earns its keep. Rather than treating audio as an afterthought, it treats the track as the structural spine of the edit, showing how to find a natural resolution point mid-track, cut in a deliberate pause, and stitch the back half of the song into a fresh entrance so the piece does not feel like a loop. The fine-tuning lesson builds directly on this, making the case that cutting on every beat reads as monotonous and that the more sophisticated move is choosing which beats to honor and which to let ride past. That single idea, restraint as a pacing tool, is the most transferable lesson in the whole course. ## Where it comes up short The techniques after that point thin out quickly. The blend mode explanation is a fair primer on darken, lighten, and overlay categories, but it stays at the level of describing what multiply does rather than building any real intuition for when to reach for it. The color grading lesson is essentially two keyframes and a purple midtone push, useful as a trick but not a grounding in color theory. The animated title, likewise, is really just the tint effect applied to sliced clips rather than anything approaching motion graphics. Because the whole course tracks one video from start to export, there is no room for variation, no second example to show these ideas working in a different context, and no exercises beyond a single open-ended assignment to build a personal 45-second piece. Editors who do not already know their way around Premiere's timeline, source monitor, and keyboard shortcuts will struggle to keep pace, since the course explains what Allan Michael is doing but rarely why a tool works the way it does at a fundamental level. At just over an hour, this is best treated as a focused case study rather than a comprehensive editing curriculum. It rewards someone who already has the mechanics down and wants to see how a working professional actually thinks about pacing and sound, but it will not teach those mechanics from scratch. The standout The fine-tuning lesson's demonstration of cutting deliberately off the beat as well as on it, so the edit stays unpredictable instead of feeling metronomic. ## What you will learn - · How to trim and structure a music track around its natural pauses and beats before cutting any video to it - · Where to source free stock footage, music, and sound effects from sites like Beachfront B-roll, the YouTube Audio Library, and Freesound - · How to build a rough cut from selects, then fine-tune cuts to land on musical punctuation points without over-cutting - · How to use blend modes (multiply, screen, overlay) to composite two clips together as a transition device - · How to keyframe a subtle color shift between clips using the color wheels panel for continuity - · How to build a simple animated title by slicing a title clip and applying the tint effect per segment Best for: Editors who already know Premiere's interface and want a concrete, looked-over-the-shoulder model for pacing cuts to music and adding lightweight visual polish. Skip it if: Complete beginners to Premiere Pro, or anyone hoping for in-depth coverage of color theory, sound mixing, or advanced motion graphics. Clarity of Instruction Engaging Teacher Helpful Examples Audio & Video Quality [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Ffaster-fresher-more-exciting-editing-powerful-videos-in-premiere-pro-cc%2F467696567)